Current News and Notes

July 2015

This month, the Institute for Writing and Thinking hosts weeklong workshops that will give high school and college faculty the opportunity to explore the role that writing plays in teaching and learning. Participants come from across the U.S. and around the world to collaborate in a conversation that spans culture, pedagogy, and language.http://www.bard.edu/iwt/

The Summer Program for Mathematical Problem Solving (SPMPS, pronounced "spumps") is back for a fifth summer at Bard. The 40 participants of this three-week residential math enrichment program, all rising 8th graders from underserved New York City middle schools, arrived on campus yesterday to start their first week of mathematical study. Their classes this summer include: Methods of Proof, Number Theory with Proof, Formal Systems, Logic, Integer Sequences, Cryptanalysis, Graph Theory, Math and Justice, Geometry of Numbers, Strategies and Games, Programming, and Infinity.

The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) celebrated its 13th commencement at Taconic Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison for women in Bedford Hills, New York, on Tuesday, June 2. The class of 2015 was BPI's second class of women. "Most importantly, we see each other as students and as people with possibility and a future. And it is a future in a world that needs what we have to contribute," said 2015 graduate Patricia. Begun as a pilot program with 15 students, BPI has since awarded almost 350 degrees to students enrolled through the Initiative.

June 2015

In an effort to improve and protect regional water quality, Bard College recently completed work on a green parking lot with a new stormwater management system. Funded by a $732,738 grant from New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation’s (EFC) Green Innovation Grant Program (GIGP), the Bard Regional Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project retrofits a heavily used parking lot near Olin Hall by using green infrastructure practices to mimic a natural ecosystem. Bioretention areas, a constructed wetland and permeable pavement were installed at the site to capture, treat, and infiltrate stormwater before it enters local waterways or the existing stormwater drainage system. Runoff from the existing lot at the main instructional building on campus currently enters a small tributary of the Saw Kill Creek, which supplies the drinking water for the College before flowing into the Hudson River.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2708

Soprano Clarissa Lyons ’11, alumna of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Graduate Vocal Arts Program (VAP), has been invited to join the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, capping an exciting year in which she was named the Grand Prize Winner at Florida Grand Opera’s Young Patronesses of the Opera Competition and the Glenn & Ginger Flournay Award Winner at Shreveport Opera’s Mary Jacobs Smith Singer of the Year Competition. In January, Lyons participated in The Song Continues series at Carnegie Hall, where she performed in a master class led by Warren Jones. She will return to Carnegie Hall in January 2016 to present a Spotlight Recital in Weill Hall as part of The Song Continues series alongside tenor Miles Mykkanen and pianist Ken Noda.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2707

Director Daniel Fish’s "stripped-down, intimate" Oklahoma! is a new take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. (New York Times) Starring Damon Daunno, Amber Gray, and two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa, Bard’s production features new musical arrangements for a six-piece Americana band by Henry Hewes Award-winner Daniel Kluger, and new choreography by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award-winner John Heginbotham. This intimate, revelatory production brings audience and artists together in the round, sharing food and telling the story of a young nation forming its identity. Oklahoma! will be mounted in 25 performances between June 25 and July 19 in the LUMA Theater of the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center.http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/theater/oklahoma-is-reimagined-at-bard-colleges-summerscape-festival.html?_r=1

Julia Rosenbaum, associate professor of art history and faculty of the American Studies Program, has been named a senior fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for the 2015-2016 academic year. The yearlong research fellowship will support Rosenbaum’s new project, “Curated Bodies: The Display of Science and Citizenry in Post-Civil War America,” which examines art, science, and representations of the body from the Civil War to World War II. Rosenbaum will be affiliated with the Smithsonian American Art Museum during her fellowship tenure.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2706

Bard Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) alum Catherine Belin ’04, who teaches at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in Bronx, New York, has been awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching grant to Botswana by the U. S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Belin is one of 48 United States citizens who will travel abroad through the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program in 2015–16. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2705

Bard SummerScape 2015 presents the Fisher Center debut of New York’s Pam Tanowitz Dance on June 27 and 28, showcasing the choreography of Bessie Award-winner Pam Tanowitz. A triple bill, the program features the world premiere of Tanowitz’s Untitled (solo for Ashley Tuttle), set to music by Mexico’s Carlos Chávez—subject of the 2015 Bard Music Festival—and danced by former American Ballet Theatre principal Ashley Tuttle. Bookending the new work are two of Tanowitz’s most recent ensemble pieces, Broken Story (wherein there is no ecstasy) and Heaven on One’s Head, named “Among 2014’s Best” by the New York Times, with live music from FLUX Quartet.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2695

A study led by Lydia Meyer ’14 and Bard biology professor Bruce Robertson finds that nesting in non-native shrubs does not negatively impact the nesting success of veery thrushes. When birds or other animals make choices that are harmful for themselves—by reducing their lifespan or reproductive success, for example—this is known as an “evolutionary trap.” While there is concern that birds that prefer to build their nests in non-native plant species will have less successful nests and risk falling into such a trap, the new study—published in The Condor: Ornithological Advances—found that not to be the case for veery thrushes (Catharus fuscescens) who preferred to nest in invasive shrubs in the forests of New York. Their nesting success was not adversely affected at all.http://phys.org/news/2015-06-songbirds-success-shrubs.html

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is pleased to announce a major expansion of its facilities. The $3 million expansion has been designed by New York-based architects, HWKN (Hollwich Kushner), and includes a complete interior re-build and expansion of the CCS Bard Library and Archives, in addition to doubling the number of teaching spaces and classrooms in the building. The expansion also includes a new 3,600 square foot Archives, Special Collections, Visible Storage, and Collection Teaching area designed by artist Liam Gillick, which will include a large wall drawing in colored ink wash by Sol LeWitt, Wall drawing #475, Double asymmetrical pyramids (1986), and two new wall vinyl acquisitions by Louise Lawler, all from the permanent collection. (New York Times)http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/arts/design/new-gallery-to-inject-another-bit-of-new-york-into-the-downtown-art-world-of-los-angeles.html?_r=0#story-continues-3

Bard College presents Adrift: Photographs by Carolyn Marks Blackwood in the Weis Atrium of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts LUMA Theater from June 21 to August 17. The exhibition is open daily from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m and is free of charge. Rhinecliff-based photographer Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s Hudson River photographs reframe segments of air, ice, and water into vivid color fields, geometric abstractions, and flattened motifs. By removing perspective and context, her unmodified images seize ephemeral moments within everyday occurrences and heighten them into foreign, unfamiliar pictures. Fourteen of these large-scale images are presented in the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center as part of Bard SummerScape 2015.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2704

On June 11, Bard College's La Voz magazine was awarded the second place prize for Best Small Circulation Publication at the 2015 Ippies award ceremony. The Ippies are the only journalism awards in New York City to honor reporting in English and in languages other than English by the ethnic and community press. La Voz, cofounded by Mariel Fiori '05 and Emily Schmall '05 in 2004 as a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) project, serves the Latino community of the Hudson Valley with a free Spanish-language magazine.

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and the Human Rights Project at Bard College announce that Shuddhabrata Sengupta, an artist, curator, and writer based in Delhi, has been selected as the second winner of the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism. Made possible through a five year-grant from the Keith Haring Foundation, the Haring Fellowship is an annual award for a scholar, activist, or artist to teach and conduct research at CCS Bard and the Human Rights Project. Sengupta’s one-year appointment will begin in September 2015. He succeeds the Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, who has held the Fellowship during its inaugural year.

The vibrant music of Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Marais, along with a Baroque dance performance, headline Aston Magna Festival’s 2015 season, "A Musical Feast," June 18 - July 18. The longest running summer festival of early music brings virtuoso guest artists on stage with the Aston Magna ensemble, playing on period instruments, on four Friday evenings at 8 p.m. at Bard College’s Olin Auditorium. Aston Magna Artistic Director Daniel Stepner, Baroque violin, leads each event and delivers a pre-concert talk one hour before each performance.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2703

The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) celebrated its 13th commencement at Taconic Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison for women in Bedford Hills, New York, on Tuesday, June 2. The commencement, the first held at Taconic, was a particularly important accomplishment for the graduates given that three years ago BPI’s program for incarcerated women, then located at Bayview Correctional Facility in New York City, was in jeopardy following the prison’s evacuation during Hurricane Sandy and its subsequent closure. BPI was able to turn this crisis into an opportunity to launch an expanded, thriving program for women at Taconic. Robert Fullilove, associate dean of community and minority affairs and professor of sociomedical sciences at the Columbia University Medical Center, delivered the commencement address. Begun as a pilot program with 15 students, BPI has since awarded almost 350 degrees to students enrolled through the Initiative.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2700

The Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle (HVCMC) series at Bard College presents three chamber music concerts in June. The Saturday evening concerts, presented by the Bard Center, begin at 7 p.m. in Olin Hall. The first concert, on June 13, features Jinjoo Cho on violin and HyunSoo Kim on piano. The second concert, June 20 has the group Les Amies, consisting of Carol Wincenc, flute; Cynthia Phelps, viola; and Nancy Allen, harp. The last concert, June 27, presents The Kalichstein-Laredo-RobinsonTrio: Joseph Kalichstein, piano; Jaime Laredo, violin; and Sharon Robinson, cello. A subscription to the three-concert series is $70. Individual tickets are $30; for students, $5. For ticket information, call 845-339-7907 or send an e-mail to hvcmc.bardcenter@gmail.com. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2696

Meta: Type: Event | Subject(s): Music |

May 2015

Bard College is hosting a multinational group of 18 university-level scholars and educators on a six-week academic exchange program from June 13 to July 26. Titled "Grand Strategy in Context: Institutions, People, and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy," this Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSIs) is designed to foster a better understanding in overseas academic institutions of how U.S. foreign policy is formulated, implemented, and taught. The goal of the program is to provide participants with a grounding in U.S. foreign policy in all its complexity, to help them develop effective syllabi and curricula, and to provide them with teaching tools to help them in the classroom. Sponsored by Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the program features an academic residency at Bard’s campus in Annandale-on-Hudson and a week in Manhattan with the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program. The Institute also features integrated educational study tours to Hyde Park, West Point, Albany, Baltimore, and nine days in Washington, D.C. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2698

Bard College held its one hundred fifty-fifth commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2015. At the commencement ceremony, Bard President Leon Botstein conferred 420 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2015 and 148 graduate degrees, including master of fine arts; doctor and master of philosophy and master of arts in decorative arts, design history, and material culture; master of business administration in sustainability; master of arts in teaching; master of arts in curatorial studies; master of science in environmental policy and in climate science and policy; and master of music in vocal arts and in conducting. The commencement address was given by Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Ifill received an honorary doctorate of laws. Honorary degrees were also awarded to dancer and choreographer Arthur Aviles ’87, neurobiologist Cori Bargmann, historian Anthony Grafton, and artist Kiki Smith.

Three Bard College students will premiere an online exhibition, Eleanor Roosevelt: "We Make Our Own History," sponsored by the Eleanor Roosevelt–Val-Kill Partnership and Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement. This exhibition is generated by a course taught by Cynthia Koch, who is public historian in residence at Bard. Based on research conducted at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, each student prepared an individual exhibit that contributes to the overall exhibition. The student exhibits include archival, print, and digital online resources, and during the premiere, each student will conduct a virtual curator’s tour of her or his exhibit. The exhibition will open on Friday, May 8, at 4 p.m. at the Val-Kill Playhouse, the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York. Refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2692

The Bard SummerScape festival presents an entirely new way to experience Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s quintessential celebration of the American frontier. The production, directed by Daniel Fish, stars Damon Daunno, Amber Gray, and two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa, with new musical arrangements for a six-piece Americana band by Henry Hewes Award-winner Daniel Kluger. It also features new choreography by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award-winner John Heginbotham. This intimate production brings audience and artists together in the round, sharing food and telling the story of a young nation forming its identity. Fish is exploring the timeless qualities of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration by re-setting it in a community hall that could well be from our own era. Oklahoma! will be mounted in 25 performances between June 25 and July 19 in the LUMA Theater of the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2690

April 2015

Bard College’s SummerScape Festival presents Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers for five performances from July 24 through August 2, at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts at Bard College. This marks the first fully staged production of the opera in the Unites States and underscores the history that the SummerScape festival has in successfully staging neglected operas. Ethel Smyth, recognized as one of the greatest female composers of the 19th and 20th centuries who counted Tchaikovsky and Debussy among her admirers. The opera will be directed by European Opera Prize-winner Thaddeus Strassberger, who has made previous appearances at SummerScape. The performance will feature the American Symphony Orchestra, directed by Leon Botstein. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2689

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and the Catskill Jazz Factory present the Aaron Diehl Trio featuring Grammy-nominated vocalist, Cécile McLorin Salvant, in a centenary tribute to jazz legend Billie Holiday on Friday, May 8 at 8 p.m. in the acoustically superb Sosnoff Theater. Billie Holiday is considered to be one of the greatest jazz vocalists of all time. Salvant will perform some of Holiday’s most beloved repertoire including her renditions of “Jeepers Creepers,” “You Go to My Head,” and “Lover Man.” The members of the Aaron Diehl Trio are Aaron Diehl, piano; Paul Sikivie, bass; and Lawrence Leathers, drums. The Catskill Jazz Factory is a non-profit program founded in 2012. It offers in-school workshops and concerts, artist residencies, and world-class performances throughout the Hudson Valley.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2685

Translating the Holocaust: H.G. Adler As Writer and Scholar,” is happening on Monday, May 4, 2015 at 4 p.m. in Bard Hall, Bard College Campus. The event offers a unique opportunity to examine the scholarly and artistic endeavors of a thinker who is just becoming known in English. Adler was among the earliest scholars to write extensively on the Shoah and was a pioneer of Holocaust Studies. Jeremy Adler, the author’s son and professor of German at Kings College London, will present the keynote address. Bill T. Jones, award winning choreographer and dancer, will give remarks. The editor and translators of some of Adler’s work will speak. Also featured is a live performance of Viktor Ullmann's song settings of Adler’s poetry. The event is sponsored by The Hannah Arendt Center, The Bard Translation Initiative, Jewish Studies, German Studies, and Human Rights Project. http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/event/index.php?eid=128364&did=106928

Bard College has been awarded a $375,000 grant from the Dyson Foundation to support scholarships for students from the Mid-Hudson Valley. Bard currently provides more than $1.8 million in financial support to more than 59 Mid-Hudson Valley students. With the increased commitment from the Dyson Foundation, Bard College will continue to recruit and retain bright, capable, and talented students from the region who may not otherwise be able to afford to attend the College. The College currently offers financial aid to approximately 68 percent of students and awarded over $40 million in undergraduate financial aid this past year. The Dyson Foundation, established in 1957, is a private, family-directed, grant-making foundation led by Robert R. Dyson. The foundation is a longstanding supporter of Bard College’s undergraduate students. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2688

Bard College will honor Deborah Borda, president and chief executive officer, of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, with the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters. As president and CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Deborah Borda manages the largest symphonic organization in the United States. Her tenure at the LA Phil has been marked by a series of artistic and educational initiatives that have garnered worldwide acclaim and become models within the orchestral music industry. Borda will be presented with the award at the Noche de gala for the Bard Music Festival, which this year celebrates the music of Carlos Chávez. The gala event is on Wednesday, April 29 at Dos Caminos Park Avenue, in New York City. Cocktails begin at 6:30 pm and dinner is at 7:30 pm. For more information, call 845-758-7414 or e-mail events@bard.edu.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2687

The Human Rights Project at Bard College has been awarded a $40,000 planning grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Milošević Trial Public Archive is a project being developed in collaboration with the Internet Archive to provide fully searchable streaming and downloadable video of the trial of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević at the United Nation’s war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands. The grant will allow the project planners to lay the necessary theoretical and technological groundwork to carry out the project in full. An existing archive of more than 1,800 hours of testimony and procedure constitutes a vital repository for what is arguably the most significant trial in the jurisprudence of war crimes to date. The planned archive will feature search capabilities that are unprecedented, and will be of significant value to scholars, researchers, and specialists, across a broad range of fields. The Human Rights Project, founded in 1999, is an exploratory research and action initiative at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2686

Bard College students Sana Mustafa and Graham Clark participated this week in the prestigious Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference, held at the academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Established in 1961, the conference brings together more than 150 undergraduate students from the United States and over a dozen foreign countries every year for three days of critical discussions, lectures, informal exchanges, and social events. This year's theme was "Sustainability and Sovereignty: Global Security in a Resource-Strained World." It is an interactive conference that requires extensive preparation and participation in roundtables. Sana's roundtable was "Natural Security: States vs. the Global Commons." Graham's was "The Eagle v. The Bear: Russian and American Grand Strategy in a Resource Scarce Era." Their participation in the conference was supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Meta: Subject(s): Social Sciences,Bardians at Work,Student | Institutes(s): Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program |

The Hearst Foundations have made this grant to Bard College to help fund the Bard High School Early Colleges’ (BHSEC) academic support services, which work to assist public school students to reach college. The grant will support one-on-one tutoring for academic support across the curriculum, peer tutors in writing and other subject areas, and the extensive college transfer advising program that students begin during their first year of the BHSEC college program. Bard opened its first early college campus, BHSEC Manhattan, in 2001 in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. At BHSEC schools, students complete their high school requirements and earn 60 college credits in the four years typically assigned to high school. The Hearst Foundations are national philanthropic resources for organizations working in the fields of culture, education, health, and social services.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2684

On Saturday, April 18, at 2 p.m., the Mid-Hudson Heritage Center at 317 Main Street will celebrate Bard College’s innovative literary journal Conjunctions with a special reading. Greg Hrbek (Destroy All Monsters), Michael Ives (The External Combustion Machine), Paul La Farge (Luminous Airplanes), and Christina Mengert (As We Are Sung) will read from their work published in Conjunctions’ biannual print journal and in the weekly online magazine. Conjunctions is an internationally distributed journal of fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction published by Bard College and edited by Bard Center Fellow and Professor of Literature Bradford Morrow. This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required, but seating is first come, first served. For more information, contact us at conjunctions@bard.edu.http://conjunctions.com/potown041815.htm

How can we make a place to live that reflects our values? Theater artist Aaron Landsman invites us to reimagine urban life in a performed public meeting. This conversation (with local community organizers and planners) will lay the foundation for his next work, Perfect City.http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=128229

Bard alumni Mildred Ruiz-Sapp '92 and Steven Sapp '89 each received the 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award in theatre. Mildred Ruiz-Sapp is an actress, poet, vocalist, and playwright; husband Steven Sapp is an actor, poet, director and playwright. Together, the two co-founded UNIVERSES in The Bronx, NY in 1995. UNIVERSES is an award winning poetic musical theater ensemble that has toured extensively nationally and abroad. The Doris Duke Artist Award, provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, is given to artists who have received national recognition for their work. The award provides grantees $275,000 and access to resources for audience development and creative exploration.http://www.ddcf.org/Global/Arts/2015%20Press%20Releases/2015%20Doris%20Duke%20Artists%20Announcement.pdf

The Experimental Humanities concentration will hold a one-day series of workshops and discussions in the style of THAT Camp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) in the Reem-Kayden Center on Saturday April 18th. The unconference format is informal and participatory, and includes both hands-on workshops with digital tools and opportunities for discussion about pedagogy and research. Digital Humanities pioneer Mark Sample will lead a hands-on workshop, Literary Deformance as Digital Pedagogy, and deliver the Spring 2015 Mellon Experimental Humanities Lecture, “Warning: Infected inside, do not enter: Zombies, the Liberal Arts, and the Digital Age.” No prior experience or outside preparation required, but reservation is necessary: http://goo.gl/forms/39lZsFvmd5http://eh.bard.edu/2015-unconference/

Celebrated author Rabih Alameddine will read from his work, An Unnecessary Woman, a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award. Alameddine is also the author of the story collection The Perv, and the novels Koolaids; I, the Divine; and The Hakawati. Alameddine divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut and was a 2002 Guggenheim Fellow. The reading, presented by the Written Arts and Middle Eastern Studies Programs and by the Difference and Media Project, takes place at 1 p.m. in Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. The reading will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. It is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations required. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2678

Organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College with support from the Ford Foundation, the 2015 Minsky Conference will take place at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on April 15-16. The conference will address, among other issues, the design, flaws, and current status of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, including implementation of the operating procedures necessary to curtail systemic risk and prevent future crises; the insistence on fiscal austerity exemplified by the recent pronouncements of the new Congress; the sustainability of the US economic recovery; and strategies for promoting an inclusive economy and a more equitable income distribution. Registration is required.http://multiplier-effect.org/the-24th-annual-minsky-conference/

On Thursday, April 16 through Friday, April 17, Bard College, with support from the Henry Luce Foundation, will host the Asia/Environment Student Research Conference on campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The conference is the first of an annual series, and is sponsored by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. The focus of the conference will be on the challenges of sustainable development and the impact of rapid economic growth in Asia on local and global environmental issues. The conference seeks to highlight research by undergraduate, masters, and PhD students. For more information e-mail Eban Goodstien, ebangood@bard.edu. http://www.bard.edu/cep/news/event.php?eid=128476

Senior Yasemin Akturk of Brooklyn, New York has won a prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Turkey, where she will teach English to university students for nine months. Akturk, a double major in human rights and photography, aims to help others learn English to gain access to opportunities in English speaking countries while improving her own Turkish and gaining teaching experience. The Fulbright ETA Program places U.S. students as English teaching assistants in overseas schools, and provides students with a monthly stipend. The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. government and designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2681

On April 14, The FDR Presidential Library and Museum will host “The Labor Movement and the New Deal—A Legacy Reborn?” a panel discussion and conversation sponsored by the Bard Center for Civic Engagement and the Roosevelt Institute, in association with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. On Monday, April 20, “Bard Labor Workshop: The State of Labor, New Models of Organizing, and the Future of Work,” a daylong workshop cosponsored by the Levy Institute and SEIU 775, will address three primary themes: the state of the American labor movement, the future of work, and new models of organizing and worker power. An expert panel will focus on each topic, followed by a Q&A session. The workshop is free and open to the public. For registration information, visit www.levyinstitute.org.

Two Bard College students have won the Davis Projects for Peace Awards. Zoe Kasperzyk from Seattle, Washington and Julia Vunderink from Austin, Texas have won a Davis grant for their project, “Breaking Barriers: Health Services to Rural Indigenous Communities,” which will facilitate collaboration between urban health clinics and rural indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. In collaboration with Fundación En Vía, their project will offer basic health classes to local women. The prize provides $10,000 in funding. http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2679

Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point present a conference entitled “Intolerance—Political Animals and Their Prey,” beginning on Wednesday, April 8 and continuing through Friday, April 10. The conference takes place in Olin Auditorium on the Bard College campus and is presented by Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Bard College, and Robert Tully, professor of philosophy at West Point. The programs are free and open to the public and no reservations are required.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2675

The Hannah Arendt Center in cooperation with the Center for Civic Engagement host a one-day conference on experiments in South Africa that attempt to combat poverty by integrating the poor into the formal economy by granting title to assets such as land and housing. This event is co-directed with the Honorable Wilmot James. The keynote speaker is Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public Policy in the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. The conference takes place in the Bertelsmann Campus Center, Weis Cinema. It is free and open to the public and registration is not required.

On Monday, April 20, Jay Cantor, winner of a 1989 MacArthur Fellowship, will read from his new book, Forgiving the Angel: Four Stories for Franz Kafka, at Bard College. In its review of the book, the New York Times writes, "Forgiving the Angel links disparate time, places and characters in an ingeniously unified and admirably purposeful fiction. [In its] formal circularity, ethical ambiguity and scrupulous undecidability, Cantor’s fiction is a worthy homage to Kafka. It is also an original work that pulls our mind through the kind of biographical and historical contraption that Kafka would probably never have put together, would probably not, as a Jew in Czechoslovakia, have survived to put together."http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2677

Ian Bickford has immersed himself in Bard's early colleges. He began as a student at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Massachusetts, and then served as a faculty member at Simon's Rock before joining the faculty at Bard High School Early College–Queens. Now he has returned to his alma mater to launch the new Bard Academy at Simon’s Rock: a 9th and 10th grade boarding and day college-preparatory program that will open its doors this fall.http://news.simons-rock.edu/21-profiles/57-third-time%E2%80%99s-the-charm

In cooperation with Bard College Berlin, Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, and the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement, this conference will discuss privacy as a place and a possession as well as an abstract right, and the role it plays in a world in which technology permeates all aspects of life, from the everyday to the intimate. This two-day event will examine not only the legal arrangements affecting privacy but privacy as a philosophical concept and a cultural tenet.http://conference.berlin.bard.edu/?page_id=477

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has awarded a $400,000 grant to Bard College for the Levy Economics Institute's Gender Equality and the Economy (GEE) program to support its ongoing work to construct a broader and more accurate measure of poverty. Specifically, the grant will support a Levy project to study gender patterns in paid and unpaid work in Ghana and Tanzania in order to better reveal “hidden” deprivations that arise due to time constraints, with the goal of informing more effective, gender-responsive poverty-reduction policies in those countries.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2674

March 2015

The 2015 Faculty Dance Concert features choreography and performance by Bard Dance Faculty with special guest choreographer Zvi Gotheiner. Gotheiner, Artistic Director of ZviDance, a New York City-based contemporary dance company, will stage excerpts from his 1991 seminal work, “Chairs,” for 10 students from the Bard Dance Program. An athletic and lyrical dance set to a diverse soundscape of music from movie soundtracks to Sergei Rachmaninoff, “Chairs” has been called “flawless,” “visually stunning,” and “beautifully shaped.” The solos, duets, and group work reveal the full spectrum of human emotion in a fierce and haunting piece that explores the relationship of individuals to each other and their environments.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2671

The Bard Music Festival breaks new ground this August, turning for the first time to Latin America with a two-week, in-depth exploration of “Carlos Chávez and His World.” In eleven themed concert programs, complemented by pre-concert lectures, panel discussions, special events, and expert commentary, Bard examines Carlos Chávez (1899–1978), the central figure in 20th-century Mexican music. Weekend One considers his achievement in helping create The Musical Voice of Mexico (August 7–9), and Weekend Two offers an immersion in Mexico, Latin America, and Modernism (August 14–16).http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2672

Bard College senior Annie Trowbridge, from Peterborough, New Hampshire, has been awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Foundation 2015–16 Fellowship, which provides for a year of exploration outside the United States. Each Watson Fellow receives a grant of $30,000 for 12 months of travel and independent study. Trowbridge has won for her proposal “Wool: A Tactile Tradition of Meaning and Ritual.” She will spend the 2015–16 academic year traveling through Iceland, Scotland, Peru, Chile, Nepal, and Laos studying wool working.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2676

Organisms living close to each other compete for a limited set of resources: this extends from plant communities to human communities. Densely packed cities, like New York, can house many more people, but the space available for each person is limited. Competition for space is intense. Past research has shown that the same is true of plants—densely packed communities of plants usually compete with each other for resources such as space, water, and nutrients. However, a new study led by Bard College biology professor Alexandra Wright and published today in the Journal of Ecology suggests that these competitive disadvantages may be outweighed by benefits gained during severe weather conditions such as droughts and heat waves.http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2670